Leonardo LASER Talks in Vienna

Since 2018 the Department of Media Theory, University of Applied Arts Vienna, is a co-host of Leonardo’s LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) Talks — an international programme of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversations. LASER Talks were founded in 2008 by Bay Area LASER Chair Piero Scaruffiand take place in over 30 cities around the world. The mission of the LASERs is to provide the general public with a snapshot of the cultural environment of a region and to foster interdisciplinary networking. The host of Leonardo’s LASER Talks in Vienna is Klaus Spiess, an internist, psychoanalyst, medical anthropologist, and a specialist in metabolic psychosomatics, who runs the cross-disciplinary Arts and Science programme at the Medical University of Vienna, where he is Associate Professor of Arts in Medicine at the Center for Public Health. His performances and installations have been shown in Europe and the USA. He has published on his work in Leonardo, The Journal of Performance Research, and The Lancet, as well as other publications. Co-host Ingeborg Reichle is Chair of the Department of Media Theory and a full professor of Media Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her primary area of research and teaching is the encounter of the arts with science and cutting-edge technologies such as biotechnology and synthetic biology.

As of 2017, LASER series are held in Washington D.C. (chaired by JD Talasek at the National Academy of Sciences), Los Angeles, CA (chaired by Victoria Vesna at UCLA), Santa Cruz, CA (chaired by John Weber at UCSC), Davis (chaired by Jiayi Young, at UC Davis), London (chaired by Heather Barnett at University of Westminster and UCL), Austin, TX (chaired by Sally Weber at Umlauf), North Texas (chaired by Ruth West at University of North Texas), Kansas (chaired by Carlos Castellanos at KSU), Zurich, Switzerland (chaired by Jill Scott and Boris Magrini, at the University of Applied Science), Paris, France (chaired by Annick Bureaud, at the University of Applied Science), Toronto, Canada (co-chaired by Nina Czegledy and Roberta Buiani at ArtSci Salon), New York City (chaired by Ellen Levy and Patricia Olynyk), Tacoma, WA (chaired by Siddarth Ramakrishnan at University of Puget Sound), Montreal, Canada (chaired by Nina Czegledy and Gisele Trudel at Hexagram), Augusta, GA (chaired by Scott Thorpe at University of Augusta), Irvine, CA (chaired by David Familian and Caitlin Moore at the Bealle Center at UC Irvine), Edmonton in Canada (chaired by Marilene Oliver and Pamela Brett-MacLean at the University of Alberta), San Jose (chaired by Craig Hobbs at SJSU), New Jersey (chaired by Elizabeth Demaray and Julia Buntaine at Rutgers University), Rio de Janeiro (chaired by Joao Silveira and Tania Araujo-Jorge), Fortaleza, Brazil (chaired by Clarissa Ribeiro), Sao Paulo, Brazil (chaired by Tania Fraga), Tehran (chaired by Marzieh Zare), Houston, TX (chaired by Surpik Angelini at Transart Foundation), Vienna (chaired by Klaus Spiess and Susanne Gahbauer with Ingeborg Reichle), Buffalo, NY (chaired by Paul Vanouse and Solon Morse at the State University of New York), Hong Kong (chaired by Yun Wah Lam and Mariana Perez Bobadilla), New Brunswick (chaired by Elizabeth Demaray), Tel Aviv University (chaired by Michael Chodakiewitz), Boston (chaired by Christian Simm), Pasadena (chaired by Stephen Nowlin), North Carolina (chaired by Victoria Szabo at Duke Univ), Santa Barbara (chaired by Jane Chang at UCSB), New Zealand (chaired by Janine Randerson), Mexico City (chaired by Luz Cardona Sanchez).